National affairs editor of The Age

Former independent Tasmanian senator Brian Harradine removes his shoes and socks to dance with members of Cape York's Wik people outside Parliament House in Canberra in 1998.

Brian Harradine, who died on Monday aged 79, was the longest-serving independent Senator in the history of Australia’s federation.

As prime ministers and fellow politicians discovered, he was also one of the toughest and wiliest.

In the new age of independents and micro-parties, he remains the man who wrote the blueprint for the effective power of one.

Former Tasmanian senator Brian Harradine. Photo: Mike Bowers

“Brian’s life was one of dedication to values and principles, humble service to his fellow man and a love for all things Tasmanian,” fellow Tasmanian and leader of the government in the Senate, Senator Eric Abetz, said.

Advertisement

Harradine as Senator for three decades unashamedly used his commitment to conservative Catholic values, to his state of Tasmania and to his old Labor and trade union principles to win major concessions from governments - particularly the Howard administration - relying on the influence of his often-pivotal vote in the Senate.

He levered massive funds for Tasmanian telecommunications and the environment - $350 million - in exchange for his support for the sale of one-third of Telstra.

In 1999, he caused panic within the Howard government when he rose in the Senate and refused to support the GST.

‘‘I cannot,’’ he said, in a stance that forced prime minister John Howard to negotiate with the leader of the Democrats, Meg Lees, whose support for the tax in turn led to her party’s ruin.

Typically, the government and colleagues didn’t see it coming. Harradine had stayed out of the months of debate about the GST, and had only the night before concluded a deal with the government to improve the youth allowance. He took everything he got from the government, and then gave them nothing. The wily negotiator hadn’t negotiated at all, but reverted to his Labor roots.

Harradine’s behaviour rarely could be predicted. He once famously discarded his shoes and danced with the indigenous Wik people outside the High Court in Canberra when they won a long-running land-rights case that he had brokered.

The independent senator took a strong negotiating stance against foreign aid that included contraception programs - though he always denied imposing his religious views on public policy.

His trade union background also ensured Harradine was a thorn in the side of the Howard government’s ambitions to push through tough industrial relations laws. The peak of Harradine’s balance of power status in the Senate ran from 1994 to 1999. His vote became less crucial after Senate numbers changed in mid-1999.

Harradine was through the late 1950s and the ‘60s a Labor man and senior right-wing union chief suspected by opposing factions of being too close to the Democratic Labor Party.

His Catholic faith and anti-communist principles eventually saw him expelled from the Labor Party in 1975, the year he entered the Senate as an independent. He was already battle-hardened.

Gough Whitlam had almost lost his own leadership when he tried to save Harradine in 1968 after the ALP Left refused his right to sit on the party’s national executive. Harradine had accused ‘‘friends of communists’’ of hindering him, and Whitlam, then opposition leader, wanted to show that the ALP was not ‘‘soft on communists’’.

Harradine made sure he got the last laugh on his old enemies. He was returned again and again to the Senate, often with record votes for an Independent, and remained in the Upper House for 30 years.

He was a familiar sight campaigning in the streets and byways of Tasmania in a tiny Fiat car loaded with children.

He and his first wife Barbara, who died in 1980, had six children. In 1982 he married Marian, a widow with seven children. The large blended and extended family made it a simple matter for Harradine to promote himself as a champion of the family.